You, my man, are the one that maintains that punishment deters crime. It is on you to provide the proof. You are the one that makes a distinction between punishment and punishment. It is on you to explain that distinction. Nice try though. Lacking logic or evidence it is noble of you to try to get me to distill a complex subject (and 35 years of experience and education) into a 100 word essay that you can ignorantly attempt to refute with overworn soundbites and empty reasoning. Now, what is that distinction between punishment and punishment? Where is that evidence that harsh sentencing serves as either a specific or general deterent to crime? Put up or shut up. You have utterly failed to address any of the mass of data I have provided, nor does it appear that you have followed up on sources (or, perhaps, understood them?) that I have provided. The best you can do is come up with some "group hug' BS - a tactic that only reveals you ingorance of the subject. We all know you want to "make 'em pay." We just don't know how you justify it to yourself, nor how you make it out to be to anyone's benefit. You are out of your league and looking more foolish with each post you make.
Question: Because of this should we back off life sentences for these people? Comment: This is just like appeasing terrorists. They threaten harm or harm to get what they want.
Nah, I think we should do this. This is a classic example of generalizing to absurdity. From an orginal post of nearly 700 words you have cherry picked an amazing 40, repackaged them out of context, and then created a pseudo-rational "question" - not in search of an answer, but in a weak attempt to push an unsupported opinion. I'll play - would you give a life sentence to juveniles who don't even have their first strike yet (those are the people surveyed) because of how they answered a hypothetical question? I guess that would be consistent with nuking Somalia because the poor bastards might be recruited into terrorist cells, or engage in piracy. Might as well start meting out "justice" pre-emptively. Would solve an awful lot of problems, wouldn't it?
What's so wrong with the logic: "If you kill someone in *wherever*, we'll kill you right back." The Law becomes utterly meaningless, unless the People fear it.
Great handle for a person that only knows self control through fear. Might I suggest that law is meanlingless unless people respect it?
I "cherry-picked" from one of your most recent posts, I didn't go back today and read the whole thread. Boy, you sure come out foaming at the mouth over a question. But maybe that is your way to take the question out of the equation and take this down another rabbit trail. It really was a question to do with something you quoted just a couple posts back (on the same page on my settings, I can't see the post number on this screen while typing.) Because of your sarcasm and the foaming, I won't take the answer as serious in any way. I really did see you quoted that post in a way to show us that we need to be scared of these guys because if they were to get caught they would kill even more people to stay out of prison.
Willy is working hard to say that not only is that not true, but there is also a better way. Ok Willy. For the sake of argument, lets say I agree our punitive system is entirely broken. Provide your solution, WITH DETAILS. I've asked you for this for 5 posts now, this is the last time I am going to ask. If you can't provide the details of how to improve it, why complain? Failure to provide a solution is an acknowledgment the system we have is the best you can think of.
There is no solution. As long as there is people there will be imperfection. On the streets you cannot start a fight, in hockey you are a hero if you do that. Not bad example anyway.
I have, and with a fair amount of detail - particularly if you follow the trail of breadcrumbs. Or, do you expect a graduate level course in criminology, psychology and sociology? And, to have it condensed to a few hundred words in a webmaster forum as well? Sorry guy, you're going to have to do some of the work yourself. You could start here, here, here, or similar places... BTW, you are absolutely correct that fear of the law is a fool's game. As I stated, unless people respect the law it has no meaning. The British tried hard to make those living in their colonies fear the law of the crown. Look where it got them. For that matter, King John tried to rule through force and fear, and look where it got him.
Well, in all actuality, I do believe that there can be worse punishments than the death penalty. Torture? Permanently secluded imprisonment? The death penalty is nothing compared to those two punishments, which is why the death penalty should be utilized. Even if you kill somebody, it still doesn't merit the government to torture you or put you behind bars for the rest of your life. That is the most severe thing the State can do to you, and that should merely be reserved for terrorists, people who commit treason, or the random psychopaths that do themselves torture other people physically. With the death penalty, it's just the essential law of nature, "An eye for an eye" or equivalent exchange, and it's pretty fair to me.
It would appear that most of these guys need a long period of incarceration. They clearly don't have enough fear of the law... Or, is that yet another example of law lacking respect.
It isn't that that Law lacks respect, for Laws won't be feared, if they're unjust; it's just that the Marijuana Laws are highly unconstitutional. Where in it does it state, under the enumerated powers of Congress, that they should be able to regulate the commerce of such goods from being distributed within the States, between the People of the United States? They can only regulate what goes on commercially between the Union and foreign countries. Marijuana laws, however, should be left to the specific States within the Union. Plus, in the context I was using, "Fear of the Law," I meant the Civil, natural Law that no one with a sane mind would oppose. That would be any Law, which protects a person's Life, Liberty, Property, and Pursuit of Happiness. Murder would obviously be one of those. Marijuana Laws are just something that we created, which may only be arbitrarily interpreted to protect a person's Liberty, even if that arbitration utterly ignores the fact that Laws can and should only have the scope of Man vs. Society or Man vs. Man, not Man vs. Self.
Yes please. Thanks for the links. From your first link - In short, your link indicates the very people running our penal system are actively funding research into bettering prevention and deterrence of criminal behavior and recidivism. I see now why you proposed no alternative. The sites you linked don't propose a sweeping alternative. They research problems in our current system and make recommendations where things can be improved. This leaves me with only one remaining question. Why are you so rabid? I've said many times throughout the post I agree there are issues with our existing system. Its the politics, isn't it. You want to tie these studies some how to the death penalty, or somehow or other make issues with our government/prison system a political issue that has a specific party to be blamed. You REALLY need to work out your arguments in your head before putting them to print. Your entire presentation has had no direction or cohesion. Let me wind up this silly thread by stating the following: I agree with you, our Prison system needs work. We need to stop incarcerating so many people for ridiculous non-crimes(drugs). Like you, I anxiously await solutions to these problems. In the mean time, lowering the amount of time and money spent killing our worst criminals would dramatically help our state and federal budgets, and help fight crime by prevention. I've seen nothing in your posts to date that argue with any of this, so I hope you can just give me a nice big Liberal hug, and we can go on with our lives.
Absolutely classic. You spend the better part of a week trying to justify punitive/retributive justice as being an effective deterent, ignore multiple breadcrumbs of sources, and do your best to maintain unsupportable opinions, and now calmly suggest its all about me? I am sorry that you feel the need to look so foolish in public. Pretty pathetic, actually...
I said it is better than nothing, or the alternative you didn't present. I never said it couldn't be made better. It seems the people in your links share my views. Hey, here is something for you.... http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20332750,00.html Balloon boy's parents get 90days(dad) and 30 days(mom) in jail, and a $42k fine I'm sure they can't afford to pay.
A little bit of revisionism here. Lets see, in a discussion revolving around the effectiveness of retributive justice you have said: Sounds like a person open to the cutting edge ideas of liberal social science developing effective revisions to an utterly broken system, doesn't it? Nah, it sounds like someone that believes if we simply "make 'em pay" that crime will go away to me. No need to go into your refusal to make a logical distinciton between punishment (see you definition of "penal" above), and...punishment. I am reminded of the story about the guy trying to put the fire in his rowboat out with an ax
No revision at all. Your proposed alternative(nothing) is no better. I always mentioned there are issues with the current system (no I am not going to dig up the quotes of myself from this thread, we both know they are there).
Death penalty cases should have one added dimension... Guilty beyond ALL doubt. Not reasonable, but ALL doubt. Prosecutors should be required to have evidence that leaves no question as to who the guilty party is and leaves no margin for error. The defense should be able to supply all possible evidence to contradict the prosecutions case without any exclusions by a judge. In other words; In order to try a death penalty case the prosecution better be 100% certain the evidence is rock solid and the defense should have unlimited availability to all proposed theory no matter how outlandish the prosecution thinks it is or how vigorously they object. It should be that stringent in respect to the transparency of all evidential material and witness testimony. Any and all witnesses should be allowed with no contest or objection from either side. When you are talking about taking a life there is no room for reasonable doubt. This is where the system has failed us in the long term. Reasonable doubt is acceptable in a lot of areas of criminal law, but not when you are talking about sacrificing one human life to serve justice for another. The margin of error has to be zero. If the case is circumstantial to any measurable degree it has to be an automatic reduction to murder one without the death penalty inclusion once a certain tolerance formula has been surpassed. All cases are based on circumstance to a degree, but this is one area that it cannot dominate. Whether you personally agree with the death penalty or not is one part of the equation. The fact that it exists at all can be attributed to the need for ultimate penalty circumstances. If that penalty is death, then as a society we are obligated to rule out all possibility for the need that it be carried out at all. It should be then that only extreme and heinous crimes that are without any doubt would apply. Do I believe in the death penalty? I don't know, I am not on death row. I am positive that anyone's belief would change if they were put in either the posture of the relative of a crime victim, or to be the one condemned to die. Right now, I simply will say that there are some people in this world that are better off not being here at all. Do I want to be the one making the decision of who stays and who goes? No. I personally like the penal colony angle. I think all gang related crimes should be called what they are - Domestic Terrorism, and these individuals who commit ANY crime against persons should have their citizenship taken and put upon an atoll in the middle of the Pacific/Atlantic Ocean where the Navy patrols and escape attempts are shot on site. They should have no communication with the outside world and they can act like the animals they are on a little pile of sand out of the way of civilized society for the remainder of their life.